


Father's Potions

by LindyA1985



Series: 12 Short Stories 2020 [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, M/M, Muggles die, Poisoning, Potions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26627755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindyA1985/pseuds/LindyA1985
Summary: When Draco was little he sneaks down to the dungeon and sees his father's secret potion project. He goes back to watch Muggles die until he has to go to school. He hopes to one day be as good as his father and please the Dark Lord. Only things take a turn for the worst when Draco discovers he doesn't have it in him to kill.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: 12 Short Stories 2020 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676857
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Father's Potions

**Author's Note:**

> The story was written for the June 2018 prompt of the 12 Short Stories Challenge.

All his life Draco had heard his mother tell him of the rooms in the Manor he wasn’t supposed to go. They were down the stairs on the right side. When Draco had been a little boy, he had sneaked down there on his socks. He had taken off his shoes to make sure he wouldn’t make a sound and alert his father of his presence. Draco had stared through a crack in the door as he watched his father sweat above a cauldron admitting green and black smoke. His father had taken a big spoon and walked out of sight. Moments later the room was filled with screams of a woman and Draco had run back up the stairs.

That night Draco had woken up in sweats, the screams still hunting him. He wondered what the potion had been his father had made. He moved from his bed and down the stairs, hoping he wouldn’t wake up his parents. He made it into the dungeon and opened the forbidden door on the right. The potion was still admitting smoke into the room. Draco looked at the bubbles and smiled. The potion was a beautiful green, similar to his bedding upstairs. For a moment Draco wanted to touch the potion, see if it was truly as hot as it looks. But he remembered the woman’s screams and shook his head. He turned and walked to the side his father had disappeared to that afternoon. At the end of the room was another door, one made of bars instead of wood. Behind the bars sat a man, shaking and crying in front of a pile of bones.

“Where is the woman?” Draco asked. He was sure he’d heard a woman scream this afternoon. But there was only a man in the small cell.

The man looked up at Draco. His cheeks were hollow like he hadn’t eaten in days. His lips were cracked and dry and his eyes were bloodshot from tears shat.

“You looking at her,” the man said. His hand pointed to the bones on the floor and Draco understood. The potion had killed her, leaving nothing but her bones behind.

Draco smiled and looked back at the potion. He would have loved to have seen how the potion works. For a moment he was tempted to get a spoon and feed it to the man in the cell. But then his father and mother would know he’d been down into the forbidden rooms. Draco let it be and made sure he would follow his father down when he would continue his work.

From that day forward, Draco would sneak down to the dungeon from time to time to watch his father create the most amazing potions. He found a passage mend for the house elves, probably to clean out the cells from his father's victims. Draco was still small enough to go through it, giving him a good view of the test subjects in the small cell. Some of them died quickly, some of them went slowly, screaming in pain for days on end before they would take their final breath.

When Draco started Hogwarts, he missed the afternoons hidden away in the passage the most. At Hogwarts nobody died, nobody made potions in all colours of the rainbow that inflicted pain and suffering to the persons taking it. School was boring.

Except for the boy that refused to be his friend. The famous Harry Potter. Draco took out his frustration of missing the dead of all those silly Muggles out on him. He did everything in his power to make Potter’s life more difficult. It was fun to fight with Potter. His temper reminded Draco of how his father would get when a potion hadn’t turned out the way he wanted. The only annoying part was that Potter somehow always got away with his behaviour. So at night, Draco dreamed of Potter in the cell at the Manor, screaming in pain from a deadly potion for days before he would die.

Draco made it his mission to become just as skilled at potions as his father, hoping to one day join him in his efforts to finding the perfect potion to end a Muggles life. One that would inflict pain and suffering on the useless beings. If only he could get into the restricted section in the library. Draco was sure he would be able to learn tons about poisonous potions from those books.

During the holidays, Draco would still sneak down to the dungeon. But soon he had grown too big to fit through the small passage towards the cells. So he could only see what the small crack in the door let him see. He could still hear the screams and the cries from the test subjects, but it wasn’t as satisfying as watching them suffer and die.

Draco took it upon himself to inform his father about his success in potions. He was top of his class for this subject, he made sure the Mudblood wouldn’t beat him there. His father praised his good grades, but he didn’t invite Draco to join him in his dungeon. It was a disappointment and Draco sulked in his room for hours.

And then the Dark Lord returned. More rooms of the Manor became off-limits. Draco sneaked around to watch how his aunt and uncle tortured Muggles and blood traitors. He watched through keyholes to see the Dark Lord praise his father for his inventions.

His mother tried to keep it all from Draco, but Draco wouldn’t let her. He wanted to be a Death Eater, wanted to help his father in doing the Dark Lord’s bidding.

It was after his father got arrested that Draco got his wish. The Dark Lord offered him a place at his table, marked him as one of his own and gave him a special mission. Draco was to kill Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard alive.

Draco was sure he could do it. He made his way to his father's dungeon and studied his notes all summer long. He would brew one of the fast killing potions to end Dumbledore’s life. The only thing to do was to find out how to make Dumbledore drink it.

Months passed and Draco became scared. There was no way that he could poison Dumbledore, the man was smarter and more cunning than him. And fixing that vanishing cabinet was no easy task either. The Dark Lord became inpatient, threaten to kill Draco’s mother with one of his father's potions if he would fail.

Draco found comfort in confiding to a ghost, the crazy Moaning Myrtle, about his fears and struggles. He didn’t want his mother to suffer for days before she would pass away, or even be the reason she would die. His father would never forgive him.

What Draco didn’t know was that Moaning Myrtle had another friend, one she told all about Draco. Draco would only learn about that a year later when Potter and his friends would be dragged into the Manor.

In the end, Draco wasn’t capable of killing another person. He froze when he had Dumbledore at wand point. And he hesitated when the Dark Lord ordered him to kill an insubordinate Death Eater. As punishment, he had to give his father’s potion to his mother. He was chained to the wall as he watched her wither away in pain. Her body slowly dissolving into nothing more than bones. It hadn’t been as exciting as when Draco had been a child. This was not some insignificant Muggle, this was his mother, a pure-blood witch.

Draco had hoped he would be next, but he wasn’t that lucky. He would live to see all hope die.

“Myrtle told me you didn’t want to kill anyone. I didn’t believe her until I saw you lower your wand when Dumbledore died,” Potter said from the other side of the cell on the day he was brought in. Draco ignored him at first, but Potter was persistent. Maybe it was to not hear the screams of his Mudblood friend while Aunt Bella took all her frustration out on the girl. Or to forget that the pile of bones in the cell with them were from his other best friend, the Weasel Blood-traitor. Draco had told him not to eat the food that was brought to them on their second day here. Potter had listened, but the Weasel couldn’t stop himself. He screamed in pain for hours before the poison melted his voice away and he just perished in silence. Draco didn’t realise he was crying until Potter had placed an arm around him and cried with him.

They didn’t see the Mudblood die, but they heard it. She hadn’t screamed in days, so broken by all the Crucio spells directed at her. But when the potion hit her body she screamed for days. Potter cried and whimpered in his corner. Draco moved close to him and hold him, the days he would enjoy listening to people die a distant memory. He realised that he would have to live in a world ruled by the Dark Lord until the day he died. He was the last of his name, the heir to the Malfoy bloodline. There was no doubt in his mind they would use him to force an heir out of him before he would perish like his mother.

“I don’t want to die,” Potter said when the screams of the Mudblood had stopped. Aunt Bella had laughed and we’d had known, she was dead and gone.

“I don’t want to live,” Draco answered him.

They smiled at each other and their fingers entwined with each other. Who would have thought they would find comfort in each other when all hope was lost. It warmed Draco’s heart, to know that he would be the last person to be kind to Potter.

Potter kissed him on their last day together. Draco kissed back, afraid to let the lips go that made him feel whole for the first time in his life. Potter died hours later by the hands of the Dark Lord. It comforted Draco to know it was a quick and painless death. It was on the front page of the Prophet. The picture showed how the green light hit him and how he fell down like a broken doll. Draco cried. He would get out of his cell, he would find a way to stop this all. His chance came when his father made a mistake and dropped his wand. The wand rolled into the cell. Draco took it in his hands and pointed it at his chest when he spoke the words Avada Kedavra.


End file.
